


There's Lots Of Room For Him

by Katherine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domesticated Fox, Fluff, Gen, Presents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 05:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: "I have kids," Clint said. "I know how it should be done. Cardboard box with holes in."Laura shook her head, tolerant but firm. She exchanged speaking looks with Natasha before saying her own, better plan.





	There's Lots Of Room For Him

"I have kids," Clint said. "I know how it should be done. Cardboard box with holes in."

Laura shook her head, tolerant but firm. She exchanged speaking looks with Natasha before saying her own, better plan. "Introduced through a fence. I've just the place on the farm."

Clint offered to go check the fence, and shortly was rustling through the hanging coats for his own, leaving his wife with his closest friend to continue their detailed planning. For one thing, they needed a day when the kids would be elsewhere.

*

Bucky's metal arm gleamed as he angled it, bracing himself easily as he crouched down. He glanced through the wire fence, almost immediately turning his head so he seemed not to look. No doubt he wanted to avoid seem to be challenging the animal.

"A fox?" Steve whispered, sounding skeptical.

Clint, standing a short ways back, was enthusiastic, of course. "A domesticated fox. Almost a dog, really. From Russia."

"Through connections," Natasha put in blandly.

Laura listened to all of them, but watched Bucky and the animal that Natasha had secured for him.

Instead of rust, the fox was a soft grey with white patches on face and paws. The tail still white-tipped, bushy; a classic fox tail, which made it all the stranger that the tail was wagging. Laura was hard-pressed not to think of the fox as a puppy. One of its ears was incongruously flopped forward, adding to the resemblance.

Bucky slowly extended his right arm. The fox, his fox, sniffed his fingers between strands of the fence-wire. The two of them were getting on, as much as one could tell such a thing in the first minutes of introduction.

An experiment in Russia, trained in the cold and brought containered to America. Couldn't get much more appropriate than that.

Glancing over, Laura confirmed how close to her Natasha was standing, and leaned a step's distance nearer. Natasha extended her hand, then pressed her fingers to Laura's in silent approval.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the domesticated foxes experiment that is described in [_How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)_ by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo25568406.html).
> 
> Title from the song "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas".


End file.
